Miscellaneous Posts #1

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Near-infrared optical spectroscopes don't take a picture of the "real you."

RadPsyNet: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RadPsyNet-Members/>	October 8, 2005

Hi everyone, In some ways, I think the whole direction of the paper Elaine posted on September 8 <http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_schizotypes.htm> puts the cart before the horse. It's not that schizotype people may be more creative than normal people, but that people who are becoming more their beings and who don't understand what they are doing and who they are becoming can, despite their insights, exhibit traits that result in others describing them as having a "schizotypal personality." Similarly, it is not just an astonishing coincidence that a book on schizophrenia (The Divided Self) has the second greatest number of ontological emotions, thoughts, and ideas in it of possibly any book published. On what might at first seem like another matter, I agree completely with the first part of Tom's #46 paper <http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff>: most people are reluctant or afraid to even consider who they truly are. I used to think that our alienation from ourselves was the number one human problem, because of all the other problems that are caused by it. But now I think the fear of who we are may actually be at the top of the list. If we are afraid to face who we truly are, then it doesn't make much difference who we are or why we behave as we do because we will never get close enough to ourselves to be able to make any constructive changes. Almost 50 years ago, "Joan," a schizophrenic woman, said It's a most terrifying feeling to realize that the doctor can't see the real you, that he can't understand what you feel and that he's just going ahead with his own ideas. I would start to feel that I was invisible or maybe not there at all. "A Schizophrenic Patient Describes the Action of Intensive Psychotherapy," The Psychiatric Quarterly, 1956. (Laing also mentions Joan in TDS) Elaine's post may represent cutting-edge psychology, but it is stone-age ontology. By not looking into ourselves, we end up thinking that tests done on alternative uses for kitchen forks actually mean something, while people such as Joan are floundering ontologically because the rest of us resolutely stay on the very surface of our selves, as we attempt to understand human life and human selfhood. For those who disagree with what I've written here, it's easy to explain how to find the answer to all of this: in one's mind all one has to do is turn around, look to the very center within oneself, and then take a step forward. Everything one needs for the search is there, the searching is free, and it can be done anywhere. What could be better than that? Ontology is a difficult subject, and I don't mean to diminish its difficulty in this post. But ontology as a subject is also extremely important and "adult" in the best sense of that word. Men and women want to live lives that they know are true and real, they want a being-to-being relationship with someone they love, and they want to live fully in the world and life that they know is reality. And the way to achieve all of this is by taking a first step toward who we are. (BTW, I think the reason Elaine quoted the paper is different from the concerns I have about it. I agree with her, but think the point she was making needs to be carried much, much further.) Kind regards, Scott K. Smith

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